Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Timpson and Gavin Williamson

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I absolutely assure my right hon. Friend that the Schools Minister would love to do that with his teachers, and is enthusiastically penning in the date. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) is right that there have been some inconsistencies. That is why we set up the national helpline to ensure there is consistency of advice, and are working with schools groups and schools trusts to support them to ensure there is a common approach. We know that getting children into schools, where they have the benefit of education and learning, will give them the best opportunities, and that is why it continues to remain our focus.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Last month, during National Adoption Week, it was announced that more than 600 children are still waiting to be placed with their forever families. I know that my right hon. Friend has since launched a national recruitment campaign, but could he say what progress is being made, despite the challenges of covid, and what plans he has to ensure that those children are placed with their forever families as quickly as possible?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend and I share a common passion about the importance of adoption. We want to drive up the rate of adoption right across the country. There have been delays in Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service, which have meant that a number of adoptions have been held up. I am meeting my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice to see what more we can do to speed up that process and give children the opportunity to be with a family forever. There is nothing more generous that people can do than open up not just their homes but their hearts to ensure that those young people have the opportunities that we all want them to have.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Debate between Edward Timpson and Gavin Williamson

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have had a broad range of measures to assist all children, including children who have special needs. Many children in the sector have benefited from free laptops, and key elements of a covid catch-up will be about helping those children to catch up on what they have lost. I will happily write to the hon. Lady with further details, as she appears to be signalling to me to do.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

Fully reopening schools in September is absolutely the right thing to do. For some children, the experience of lockdown will have been characterised by social isolation, lack of routine and, in some cases, trauma. What is my right hon. Friend doing, through the guidance published today and other measures, to help schools with an increase in poor behaviour from September? May I encourage him to bring forward recommendations in the Timpson review of school exclusion so we do not see children removed from school when they have only just returned?

[Gavin Williamson]

That review did have a very thoughtful author, and we will certainly move forward on that. Our guidance does recognise some of the real challenges that many children will face as they come back into school as they will not have had the same structures of behaviour and discipline built around them. It is vital that we re-establish proper behaviour and discipline practices for all children, and I know schools are working closely on how they build that around those children, but we must understand that where there are good behaviour and discipline policies, there are vastly reduced numbers of those children excluded from schools. We will work with schools to deliver that. I pay tribute to Tom Bennett and the behaviour hubs for the work they do to establish strong behaviour practices in some of the most challenging schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Edward Timpson and Gavin Williamson

Monday 22nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I feel the answer can only be yes.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

On the same theme, recent data from Sport England suggests that one in three children have been less physically active during lockdown, with one in 10 doing no physical exercise at all. Will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity today, during National School Sport Week, to confirm that the instrumental PE and sport premium for primary schools, which is worth £320 million a year and was introduced by the coalition Government in 2013, will have its funding guaranteed for the next academic year, 2020-21?

Educational Settings

Debate between Edward Timpson and Gavin Williamson

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

In this statement, we are dealing with making sure that we have the provision we need for those key workers in order to sustain our NHS, but I very much accept that many wider issues are raised as a result of this. That is why we have had some reluctance to be in a position of closing schools rapidly, but when the evidence and the science point out the fact that we need to make changes, it is right that we do so.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

The measures that my right hon. Friend has announced are profound, but it would appear that, in the circumstances, they are now a necessary step to take. Does the definition of “vulnerable children” include children in need, of whom there are about 400,000, and children on a child protection plan, of whom there are about 50,000? If it does, that will significantly increase the number of children whom we hope will still be able to go to school.

[Gavin Williamson]

This is for all those children with a social worker, so those are the categories that will be covered.